Slashdot Mirror
Hellgate: London To Be Closed, Possibly Saved?
Namco Bandai recently announced that Hellgate: London would be shut down on January 31, 2009. They'd been supporting the game's servers since Flagship Studios saw massive layoffs in July. Now, a fansite has located an announcement on the game's Korean site suggesting that it may be picked up by a Taiwanese company called Redbana. The English version of the announcement says, "In the meantime, stay alert: the Hellgate will soon re-open, and your valor will be needed again."
Not like it's even a WoW competitor, why should it get a second chance?
For those wondering if 'redbana' is a portmaneau of 'red' and 'banana'... you're right. In fact the Chinese name of the company, literally translated, is "Red Banana(s)". ... yeah, I've got no idea either. I mean 'redbana' works just as well as 'google' does perhaps, but Red Bananas...? I give up.
Not having purchased or followed this game after release, I was wondering what the state of the in-game advertising is with this announcement? Will the single-player game still be downloading from the ad content servers, or will those go away as well?
I sort of feel bad for those who purchased lifetime subscriptions, but not really.
I browse Slashdot at +3, Funny
I can't believe you fucking morons waste your life in games like this. Listen, this is your LIFE. You need to be living with real human beings. You need to go find a girlfriend and spend time with her. You need to find happiness. Happiness is not in your online games, it is in other people.
Do you really want to be 40 years old and look back to your 18-25 years and realize you pissed them away in fits of loneliness playing RPGs and crying yourself to sleep? I know most, if not all of you, had no real childhood or high school experiences because you were too busy being antisocial losers. Change that, now. How much greater would your life be now had you worked up the courage to talk to that one girl and go to the prom with her? Wouldn't high school have been amazing if you actually went out with friends on the weekend and saw movies? This is why you people love anime so much, because it portrays these perfect people going through high school living the lives YOU wish you could have lived back then.
Stop wasting your time on the Internet. Look outside and see the trees and the sun. Please. There is a world out there. There are interesting people all over. Why do you want to throw away what is left of your life playing fictional RPGs when real life is one big RPG with real consequences and relationships?
Are you just afraid? I mean, look at me, I own this boat.
I know I was very excited about this game for a long time. Then when I purchased it I found that I'd purchased one of the most half-finished games I'd ever played. I for one am surprised that people are still playing this horrible game. I'm just glad I didn't bother to pay for the lifetime subscription like others who got suckered into it. Biggest waste of $60 I've ever spent.
Seriously ask the developers for it.
Liquidators find selling code worthless and if you don't try now then the copyright will forever be gone down the blackhole and you'll never be able to find the right owners or even get a copy of the code.
Oh noes, my e-properties. I invested so much time in gathering virtual wealth and upping numbers in the database.
In all seriousness though, does anyone actually play this?
Actually, the game assets were put into escrow as assets against investment from other companies. I don't remember if this "Redbana" is the investor, but there's someone that is interested and has a claim against the assets. So, no open sourcing for this game. Plus, consider that open sourcing a project like a game of this scale is not a non-trivial bit of work.
Anyway, the whole situation with Hellgate and Flagship was a pretty fucked up affair. You can see an interview with Bill Roper here: http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=0&cId=3169356. I also wrote a book about business and legal issues: Business & Legal Primer for Game Development , which would give you some insight into the business and legal issues in game development.
Brian "Psychochild" Green
MMO developer's blog
Sounds like people should start doing packet dumps of the server so that they can create a clone server. According to the 1UP article it's a bank (Comerica Bank - Dallas,TX) that now owns the rights to Hellgate:London. I don't see a bank doing anything with it other than maybe trying to find a buyer for it. I would doubt that any company seriously would by the rights to it from the bank given that it wasn't a great seller. In fact Metacritic shows it only has a rating of 70% which is pretty average, but a number of people have commented on numerous bugs with the game. So I doubt it would be of much value to a game company since they could create a similar IP without having to pay for it and pick up the negative community opinion due to the company going under.
But of course I could be wrong.
I'm not surprised that they're still trying to make money from this debacle-- all of the investors must have taken a gigantic bath. I just don't think that people are going to go for it, at least not in North America.
Seriously, at this point, is there anybody on Earth who cares about Hellgate: London?
Why does Slashdot keep posting stories about this? It's very simple: Flagship had a good concept. They built up all sorts of hype around it. Then they released a half-finished game that looked and played like crap, so people ignored it and they went out of business.
And pretty soon the Hellgate servers will go down, and the five people who play it will have to deal.
Can we please just let this whole embarrassment die?
A question that should be raised is, what happens to the game I paid good money for? If an MMORPG's service is canceled, you can't play it by itself or legally (forced to play pirate servers). Sounds like you just got ripped for $50 or at least the EULA should include a clause stating that emulation of server software may be legal in discontinuation of service.
Was in HG beta, played from release to Mid March, never did the founders thing though. It could have been a really good game, but it failed someplace along the way (try serving a half baked cake at a banquet sometime). Ive read all the interviews with Roper & Company. Basically, I find the collapse of the game quite sad. My wife and kids also miss the game.
But hey, its always playable on single player.
Red banana can do what they want, but the people here in the states already fell for this one.
RIP Hellgate.
~DF
I recently bought a used copy of Hellgate: London for $6.99 at a local shop. While the game installed fine with the key code from the manual, I could not create a multiplayer account because the previous owner had used the code to create the account. I contacted EA support and asked them for a new key. They asked for my personal information, screenshots and I even sent them a scan of my reciept and the manual with the key on it. After days of back and forth, they finally told me they could not identify me as the owner of the key. Really, what a surprise. They wanted me to send them my manual or game disc and $10 to get a new key, just so I could create a multiplayer account. Glad I didn't do it now that the multiplayer is being shut down.
I have been able to play the single player game and thought repetitive, it has been enjoyable. It is really not very challenging as I have only died once. The levels also seem to be very repetitive. Essentially it is Diablo from a first person perspective with swords, guns and spells.
This is one of the reasons PC gaming is dying. No LAN multiplayer capability and dependent on a third party for providing the multiplayer support just so they can enforce their DRM. This game is a prime example of one that will die a sudden death and really piss off people who spend $29.99 or less to buy it from a bargain bin only to find out they can't play multiplayer at all.
Remember back when all these "FROM THE GUYS WHO MADE BLIZZARD WHAT IT IS!!!111!!!" guys made Hellgate, and said they would be putting WoW out of business?
I find it as funny now as I did back then. Good times.
Actually, the game assets were put into escrow as assets against investment from other companies. I don't remember if this "Redbana" is the investor, but there's someone that is interested and has a claim against the assets. So, no open sourcing for this game.
There is a bit of precedent for something like this. Blender came to be in a similar situation. When the company failed, their creditors agreed to open source it for a payment of around $100000, which was met by community donations. Now, I doubt that Hellgate: London could get the same level of donations that Blender did, but if the company is looking at a total loss they could possibly be persuaded to let it go relatively cheaply.
..really.
Playing Hellgate in Hardcore Elite mode (one life - when you're dead, you're dead. Lose all your stuff and start again) is one of the most intense gaming experiences you will ever have.
If you've never felt your heart pounding in your chest *before you've even seen the boss monster*. Or had your hands shaking and your palms are sweating after a particularly intense battle, you haven't really played it. I've walked away from the computer and been *scared* to continue playing...
The repetetive tilesets, shallow quests and daft NPC's don't matter a toss at the end of the day. When you stand to lose *weeks* of levelling a character through one silly mistake, you're going to play as though your life depends on it...
It's impossible to explain to someone that's never played hardcore, but HG:L is at the top of it's class for full-on, in-your-face, adrenalin-pumping, non-stop 3D demon-slaying.
Here's a short video made by one of our guild members: Burn in Hell. There are a couple of other vids on that page too.
It's a damn shame that such a great game just didn't make it, but I'll be playing until I see "server not found" when I try to log in...
I find it hilarious that when the Black Isle guys split and formed their own company, Troika Games, they went under too, but released awesome title first: Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. The included campaign was fun enough, but there was an editor too, so there were a lot of custom things released by fans. A fan was able to keep releasing patches to fix bugs in the game. Troika was working on the freaking sequel when they finally had to close up shop a few years later.
Now, the guys from Blizzard North (a company acquired by Blizzard while it was working on the Diablo title) quit after D2 comes out and go form their own company. They write a game, which is in all seriousness a Diablo clone, and a bad one at that (for an example of a really good Diablo clone, one that is actually better than D or D2, check out Titan Quest). Their execution of said clone leads me to think that w/o access to Blizzard's QA and project management teams, they would have had a failure of Diablo as well.
Their attitude near release was the height of pride (and even spite) with a rabid pack of fanboys viciously attacking anyone who brought up legitimate problems. I played some of the beta, it was terrible, anyone who played it could plainly see the game was going to be a joke, that the revenue couldn't possibly sustain the bug fixes and the promised, yet missing, content.
It is easy to see which of the two teams I mentioned above had the skill, on their own to produce a working game (not that Arcanum didn't have bugs and problems, it did, but so did Planescape: Torment). Hint to the old Blizzard North team, you guys don't have it, split up and employ your skills as part of a bigger team to make up for what you lack. I have no doubt some of you are good game devs with an occasional good idea, but that's all you are. I even wonder about some of you as gamers, how could you play your own game and not go throw up afterwards? Yes, this is harsh, but I feel absolutely sick if I end up having to pass off code that crappy as a finished and working product. I've structured my work life in a way where I don't have to do it. You should too. As for Bill Roper, that guy is a grade A jerk and BSer, read his interview if you want, but it's BS.
LifeTime Subscriptions are a sign of desperation. And to have them available out of the gate... That's just a clear sign of poor product!
No I didn't follow this game. No I wasn't least bit excited when I heard about it. I didn't even blink when I saw their cinematic trailer. StarCraft Trailers are better than that and they are many years older. And yes, deep down I felt it would die.
Yeah, the problem is that the Hellgate assets were put up as collateral for millions of dollars in loans. It's not impossible that they might take a small sum of money to do open source, but that seems unlikely if the company thinks they can run the game to make more money than that.
Also note that many times games have licensed stuff from third parties that must be re-licensed. That makes open sourcing everything much more difficult. If the game used stock sounds (which many games do), then those assets would have to be re-licensed or replaced. There are a lot of issues to consider, still.
Some more insight.
Brian "Psychochild" Green
MMO developer's blog